interviewing users Articles & Videos

  • AI Interviewers

    AI interviewers can conduct user interviews on your behalf, but they come with real limitations. Learn how they work, how well they perform, and the best use cases for adding them to your research toolkit.

  • Focus Groups 101

    Focus groups are a polarizing research method. Within UX, they are best used in early discovery research to understand interest in a concept.

  • Informed Consent for UX Research

    Ethically sound UX research requires informed consent from a research participant. Informed consent means the participant fully understands what the study entails and the potential consequences of participating.

  • Problem Space and Solution Space Research

    Both problem-space and solution-space research are needed to design products that are useful and usable.

  • Building Rapport with UX Research Participants

    Researchers should build rapport and embrace real human interactions to put participants at ease during a study.

  • Using the Funnel Technique in User Interviews

    Start with broad, open-ended questions in your interviews before introducing more specific questions to gather accurate, in-depth information.

  • Guided vs. Unguided User Studies

    Directed user research where you ask people closed-end questions can bias the outcome in favor of those things that are being asked about. Unguided studies are often better at revealing true user preferences.

  • Five User Interview Mistakes to Avoid (in 5 Minutes)

    Probing vs. leading. Saying enough to make your participant comfortable, but not so much you derail the research. 5 pitfalls in the user interview process are demonstrated so that you can avoid them the next time you talk with users.

  • Probing in User Interviews

    Follow-up questions in user interviews gather more detailed information from participants than they provided in their initial answers to our planned questions. This video provides examples of two main forms of probing questions.

  • What Are Contextual Inquiries?

    Contextual inquiry is a user research method that is helpful to define requirements, improve processes, learn what's important to users, and spark ideas for future projects.

  • User Feedback vs. Innovation

    Relying too much on feedback from customers risks hampering innovation, so what is the best balance for UX design?

  • Are You Doing Real Discoveries?

    Discoveries are a powerful part of the UX design process, but unfortunately, many teams are not doing true discovery. Here are 5 main ways to go wrong.

  • 5 Qualitative Research Methods

    Qualitative user research is invaluable for UX design. Here's an overview of 5 key methods beyond standard usability testing that are especially useful for early discovery studies.

  • Intentional Silence as a Moderation Technique

    When conducting user interviews or running usability studies, don't rush to talk as soon as the user stops speaking. Deliberately staying silent for longer than it feels comfortable will often prod users into saying more.

  • Don't Listen to the Customers

    The first rule of user experience design is: don't base the product on what customers *say* they want. You must watch what people actually *do* when using your design.

  • The 3 Types of User Interviews: Structured, Semi-Structured, and Unstructured

    We explain the difference between the 3 main types of user interviews, and at what stages of a UX design process it makes the most sense to use each.

  • How to Conduct Research for Customer Journey Mapping

    When conducting research for customer-journey maps, use qualitative methods that allow direct interaction with or observation of users, such as interviews, field studies, and diary studies.